(UN)Programmed: Finding Silence to Own Our Truth

Whether we want to make a change or just come to radical acceptance over something, we must know our truth. We must trust ourselves. Trusting ourselves can sometimes feel like one of the most difficult things to do at times and we must ask ourselves why?

The honest answer is that we have been conditioned to look to external sources for answers—to family and friends, culture, society. We are trained from an early age.

There comes a time, however, when we must ask ourselves is this how I truly feel, or is this someone else's idea or even feeling?

Some questions we can ask ourselves:

·      Have I been trained to think my options are more limited than they actually are? Does my ego want me to appear a certain way to myself? To others?

·      Do I have a script that I’m following that I think my life should follow?

·      Do I feel I am supposed to act, think, or feel a certain way?

·      Why am I looking outside myself for these solutions or answers when I can just trust what my inner voice instead?

·      What strikes as real vs what I’ve been taught, conditioned or even manipulated to think?

At some point, we are forced to ask, “What is my truth?” and stand by it. Yet sometimes we can deceive ourselves because we don’t want to see the ugly truth—it’s either too uncomfortable, sad, painful or inconvenient. Truth often forces us to make changes—that’s why it can feel scary and unsettling, but if we don’t face our truth, then we are deceiving ourselves. And the less we will deceive ourselves, the more aligned we become, and the more we can manifest what we truly desire. It’s a muscle we must learn to flex. Our very authenticity depends on it.

Ignoring others advice

People love to give advice until they are blue in the face, but they are always coming from their own particular truth, which is distinctly not our own. We must distinguish ours from theirs. Through habituation and proximity, we absorb other’s attitudes—a process that can have huge consequences for our lives.

We owe it ourselves to go within and ask what do I think and feel about this situation, this job, this relationship? We must dissect it in all its shades of gray and complexity and find the subtle, simple truth staring us dead in the face. Often, we just needed the silence and intention to hear it.

The only person who is going to reckon with our truth is us, and the only person that’s going to make aligned change is us—even if it’s scary. In fact, it’s always going to feel a little scary, a little surreal, but what is life but a little scary and a little surreal?

Usually it’s a challenging situation that throws us down onto a bed of nails of our own truth where we naturally must dig within, where we can’t B.S. ourselves anymore; where reality has smacked us across the face and we must sit down and rub our cheek for a long moment and ask ourselves, what is really going on?? What do I think? What do I truly want?

Sometimes the truth doesn’t come to us in our minds, but from our bodies. Now when I make a decision, I immediately check in with my body to see how do I truly feel? Is there is resistance? If so, I listen, even if I don’t understand it mentally. It forces me to mull it over long enough to arrive at my truth that my mind hadn’t fully grasped yet.

Only then we can we act upon our truth, because if not you, then who?

Soul-prompt: What’s my truth vs. others? What do I truly feel about a person or situation if I strip away my ego or conditioned response? What does my body say?